During the growth of the state in the first part of the early modern period, the office of intendant or commissioner played a major role. Based on medieval precursors, among which commissions, common in the ecclesiastical sphere, played a pioneering role, an intendant was meant to have a special area of responsibility or supervisory function towards the existing government and the traditional civil servants – a distinction represented by the English contrastive terms office and commission [4]. The result was often conflict with the structures and hierarchies of …